From Industrial Cable Wire Spool to Plant Table

One day in 2001 on my way to go shopping I saw a empty spool from some kind of industrial wire in somebody’s garbage at the curb.

As I kept on driving I realized that I had a round table top sitting in the garage, just waiting to be put to use. I love recycling and rushed through my shopping and made it back just in time before the garbage truck arrived.

The result is this cool looking, recycled industrial wire spool, nature inspired small table

How I Created It

underside view of assembled spool

Closer inspection revealed that I had to tighten the screws that kept the to ends together. Tightening the screws, however, made them stick out at one end more.Next I screwed the spool to the underside of the table top.

Then I sanded the wood lightly and coated it with one coat of waterbased varnish.

The next step was to basecoat the central tube and the base with some light green paint. After it was all done I realized it would have been easier if I had used a darker color.

underside painted black and center column stenciled

I painted the underside of the top with black paint. Then I poured different shades of green onto a pallet and used a small makeup sponge to apply the paint to an ivy stencil. I kept on alternating the various shades and applied them on top of each other overlapping until I was pleased with the result.

Something’s still missing

Now it looked like a jungle but something was still missing, it just did not look right. Then I got an idea, it needed some animals.

lizard and butterfly

Now rather than freehand draw them over the leaves, something I am not very good at, I went looking through my graphics collection.Once I found what I wanted I printed on regular paper the outline of the animals about 3″ tall.

The ladybugs I created from scratch and made them about 1-1½-inches long. All that was left to do was to color them in with acrylic craft paint, cut them out and decoupage them onto my table.

To finish it off, I gave the design a couple of coats of clear waterbased varnish.

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About Me

Marlies is a 'renaissance woman' a 'Jack' or should that be a 'Jill' of all trades. Everything is touched by her artistic and creative outlook. What looks everyday to most, is seen in a totally different light by this creative maven.